Alan Pritt: A New Angle On The iPad

Social without the internet? Yeah, Apple haven’t forgotten about real life. They’re not led by trying to build new innovative devices, with tonnes of features and taking advantage of the latest trends in social networks. They think how the masses could use it and then they obsess over making that experience great. They think through hundreds of scenarios and make sure their technology supports how people behave. Their goal is to make the technology disappear. Far too many tech companies want to make the technology as obvious as possible.

Like every other company, Apple has to make compromises. But they choose a different set of compromises to everyone else. The camera will come later because the camera makes sense to the masses. But it isn’t their priority. Other features won’t get added at all, because Apple have decided it doesn’t fit any experience that an ordinary person would desire.

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2 Responses to Alan Pritt: A New Angle On The iPad

Nice. Good read. Just to say: PostiPod, Apple looks to huge content areas to run through Apple’s hardware. With the iPad, there is a confluence of content that Apple has already secured: music, apps. But Steve Jobs knows that new hardware must be matched and mated to new gigantic, coherent content sectors. The last slide in his presentation says it all: Steve is going after education as a market. The whole enchilada of educational publishing.

The hardware is spot on: Simple, safe, small, cheap, or soon will be, exactly right for students, from grade school to grad school.The software provides the creativity/research tools students need. The iWork apps are astonishing, creative, and fun software.

It will not mean all printed books be damned but it will mean printed textbooks be damned. Maybe it WILL be textbooks be damned: I’m guessing it’s the creativity tools that Steve really cares about. Ten years out, every student will have an iPad or something just like it. Except Apple will be there first and foremost. That’s a done deal as of last Wednesday.

Everything about the iPad says that Steve wants to be remembered as the guy who revolutionized schooling if not learning. Take a look at the mission at the OLPC site. That’s Steve’s kind of language and vision, except he not only thinks bigger than most of us, he thinks better.